Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
[Commentary] Now that everyone in Iowa City except me has weighed in on the issue that will define my generation — whether or not 19- and 20- year olds should be allowed into the bars — I thought I would join the revolutionary fray by adding my sobering insights.
After all, I am a survivor of the late-’80s prohibition era in Iowa City. During my first year of college at the University of Iowa, like a good number of the Vote-Yes-on-21 supporters, my thoughts were consumed by how I was going to get into the bars, not solving problems for my Quantitative Methods class – a weed-out course for prospective business majors, assuming binge drinking doesn’t get them first.
Consequently, I spent 359 days a year plotting how I would slip past the bouncers on my pilgrimage to the promised land: a barstool propped up in the corner of the bar, somewhere I could hide my true, underage identity. Granted, I was a non-traditional student in the sense that I had postponed my college plans to serve active duty in the United States Army, but upon my exodus from active duty, I was still underage.
During the remaining six days out of the year, underage drinkers are granted a reprieve from their illegal endeavors, when Iowa City suspends all misdemeanor-related laws on football game day. The Iowa City Police Department turns a blind eye to underage drinking, open-container violations, and public intoxication. Ironically, once ticket holders break the plane of the stadium entrance and enter into security’s jurisdiction, a hyperbolic sense of law and order exudes from behind the deputized badges of Two-Star Security’s every-other-weekend warriors.My student tenure at UI saw a crackdown on alcohol in the stadium, including any containers (e.g., boda bags) that may harbor America’s legalized drug of choice. In later years, the UI banned smoking and an even more pervasive, life-threatening habit: the “Hey Song.” The UI band was prohibited from playing the “Hey Song” after members of the inebriated student section gospel choir, much to the chagrin of national television audiences, added their own words, mincing F-bombs into the instrumental interludes.
While Two-Star managed to keep a lid on the lewd and lascivious alcohol-induced behaviors of the drunks corralled in Kinnick Stadium during the game, those who could not adhere to the prescribed regulations were driven from the stadium, where they felt their drinking practices were inhibited by the inconveniences of law and order.
And now, the under-21 crowd has taken to the streets to defend their rights to gain admittance to bars. Currently, 19- and 20-year olds are allowed into bars, but if the proposed ordinance should pass, these folks will be banned from entering after 10 p.m. Supporters of the measure, following the same logic adopted by the UI when it banned drinking from Kinnick, argue the ordinance would reduce underage and binge drinking. Opponents contend the measure would merely divert the problems associated with underage drinking to the surrounding neighborhoods, where police officers have less control enforcing the existing laws.
The 21-only referendum stirs up the bigger issue of what should be Iowa’s legal drinking age in the first place, since 18-, 19- and 20-year olds are classified as adults and have the right to vote, buy cigarettes and pornography, gamble and join the military. The drinking age in Iowa used to be 19, until 1984, when the federal government, under President Reagan’s supposed anti-federalism watch, decided to hold the states for ransom, demanding they change the drinking age to 21 or never see their pretty little highway funds again. The thought of the stretch of Interstate 80 looking like the stretch of I-80 in Illinois, forced the Iowa legislature to pay up, and their hands have been bloody ever since. The feds have used the federal-highway threat on more than one occasion to usurp the power of the states (e.g., state adherence to the .10 blood-alcohol limit used to enforce drunk-driving laws).
A number off the anti-21-Only base has espoused the old argument that if you’re old enough to fight and die for your country, you should be old enough to go into a bar and order a beer. In a guest opinion piece in Saturday’s Iowa City Press-Citizen, former Iowa City councilman and author, Larry Baker, offered a compromising rebuttal to this argument:
So, how come none of these people actually wants to fight the good fight needed to change the drinking age? Perhaps because they know they would be laughed out of Des Moines? No, they want the easy loophole that Iowa City law currently allows.
Me, I say that we make it legal for anybody with a military ID to enter a bar, regardless of age. The rest of you, who want to piggyback your self-indulgence on the backs of other young people’s genuine service — go enlist. Or grow up.
When I was finished serving the active-duty portion of my eight-year contract with Uncle Sam, I, too, thought I had earned the right to drink, but this was not the case when I returned from Germany — where I was stationed for 18 months. I spent my first month back in America in New York City with my roommate from Germany, who out-processed two months before me. Tarantino, a prototype of Jerry Seinfeld, lived his entire life shuffling back-and-forth between his mom and dad’s abodes in New York City and Jersey City.
The first night we hit the bar scene in Greenwhich Village, I thought I would just use my military ID, assuming that should be sufficient enough to gain access into the bars. After all, what reasonable New York City bouncer or bartender, with clear conscience, would refuse to sell a beer to a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces?
Answer: All of them.
Dejected, Tarantino told me not to worry. He went into a tiny market, purchased two 40-ounce beers from the clerk, who put them in form-fitting individual brown bags. As we walked around the Village, passing several peace officers in our travails, not once was I questioned about my age. Similar to game day in Iowa City, it was okay for underage people to drink in the New York City streets, just not inside the bars.
When I moved to Iowa City, the ICPD was less forgiving than the NYC cops. I’m guessing the latter may have had more urgent matters to tend to, say an armed robbery. Consequently, I had to play the fake-ID game and take my chances if I was going to drink. Every time the Iowa City beat cops came in to ID people, my bladder’s Pavlovian response was to go seek relief. In the meantime, I had concocted my plea, if I was ever charged with underage drinking. I planned on filing a countersuit against the U.S. government for sending me over to Germany and not only exposing me to alcohol, but encouraging binge drinking on the base and in the barracks. A case of beer was only $8 and they sold Budweiser in the pop machines. The beer was actually cheaper than the soda pop. Who wouldn’t want to save a little extra money?
Regardless of the outcome at today’s election, underage drinkers in Iowa will always be comforted knowing they’ll have six days a year they can count on for drinking uninhibitedly and unperturbed. Given the football team’s latest trend, we may need these six days to help forget.
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